KARABAKH SIDE ARTIFICIALLY ISOLATED FROM NEGOTIATIONS

Arkady Ghukasian’s Interview to Regnum Agency

Azg/arm
26 Jan 05

Arkady Ghukasian, NKR President, said in the interview to the Russian
Regnum agency that the consequent meetings between the Azeri and the
Armenian foreign ministers “are useful, certainly.” On the other hand,
he added that these meetings can’t replace the full negotiation
process with the full-right participation of NKR. “One shouldn’t
forget that the Nagorno Karabakh issue was risen by the people of
Karabakh and it concerns the status of NKR. The rest is the result of
the war Azerbaijan forced us to fight,” Ghukasian said.

In response to the question whether Yerevan and Stepanakert make
sufficient efforts to avert discussing of formulae unfavorable for NKR
at various international instances, Ghukasian said that the
unfavorable characteristics for the Armenian side in the documents of
the international instances are conditioned by the absence of Nagorno
Karabakh in the negotiation process. “The negations and discussions of
the Nagorno Karabakh issue are carried out on the level the relations
between Armenia and Azerbaijan. They are supposed to cause such
characteristics time after time. Here, we don’t mean the volume of
efforts, but the principles and the conceptual approaches in the
settlement mechanisms,”NKR president said.

As for the question whether it is time for Yerevan to put forward the
issue of NKR participation in the negotiations, Ghukasian said: “First
of all, the addressee is not right, secondly, the issue will have no
peaceful settlement if we continue issuing ultimatums. It will not be
settled without NKR’s participation in the negotiation process,
either. Make your own conclusions.”